october 8th

(listening to Dave Matthews Band "Long Black Veil.")

it's a rainy october day. the leaves are changing and they are marvellous. If ihad a digital camera, i'd take picture and post it, but i dont. so imagine all the autumn pictures of the North East you've ever seen, all the bits in films, in tv shows, in other photos, and all of that, and that's what I'm seeing out my windows. just when i think its reached it's peak, it changes and surprises me.

this week has been a long week for work. lots of funs tress. i have somestudent plagiarising a paper. and i just dont want to have to deal with it. but i have to. whats making it worse is he has stopped coming to class, will not return emails or phone calls. his parents think he is going to class. i called his home from my office on thursday and his mother said that he was at school and he had class that day. I didn't tell her he hasn't been there the past few classes. so he's just digging himself a deeper hole as he moves on. Kings (one of the schools I teach at) has a policy. If a student misses more than two classes you have to report them. then some office at the college will intervene, call and schedule an appointment with the student to see what's happening. then they'll get back to me. so we shall see what happens.

i have been fighting writers block. i hate writers block. it makes me feel so small and so incapable of ever writing. but my mind has started to dream stories again. when i'm sleeping it's started composing sections of my novel. so it's nice to know that my mind is already making progress agaist the block. that i just have to have the will and belief to get through it. so i am looking forward to this. :) am getting antsy to write creepier stuff than I have in the past. I guess my roots are showing.

we have tried to keep the prophet's advice, challenge actually to have the book of mormon read by the end of the year. I have less than a hundred pages left. in reading with rylan, we have little more but we're defintely trying and going for it. but i noticed something intresting. the more i read, and as much as i am enjoying it and gaining from it.. etc.. the tv is on less. we are more choosy in what we watch or listen to. which in turn makes the spirit in the house stronger, and more at peace. the feeling of being so inadequate isn't there as much.
we still watch tv, certainly. but its not like it used to be. we watch lost on wednesdays, supernatural on tuesdays, and i end up watching alias on thursdays sometimes (i'm taping it for my sister). but thats roughly the jist of it. i caught a couple things, but no where near as much. i didn't have that desire to do that. by no means am i saying tv is evil. but i keep hearing the quote (from tv ironically) of "my dad says TV is important. it keeps people from seeing what's really going on.." and yeah i am starting to think it's right. it blocks and jams our signals to ourselves, to what we need, or want, what we should be, what we want to be, to the spirit and all of that..
and the professor docotorow (the man who wrote Ragtime, and the new book The March) said if you watch Tv you'll write for Tv. If you want to write literature, you need to read literature. he challenged us to not watch tv for the entire semester. i did fairly well. so that comes to my mind as well.
rylan is off (apparently) running in a cross country meet. We'll see what happens with the rain. I've been half expecting him to return because where they are running on the course, there's a whole slope they have to run, but there's no grass on it. which equals mudslide and danger. so i'm wondering. but i guess they're running cause he's not home yet.

i guess thats all for now.